The rumours of an imminent attack began about two hours before from US television journalists. The ripple of anticipation spread, and then a whole range of reports were widely circulated.
Locals and journalists in the northern Afghan town of Hoji Bakhoviddin began gathering around TV sets which had been brought in over the past few weeks. The atmosphere was, if anything, fairly calm.
When news of the start of the bombing came through, these people expressed no great outpouring of emotion, except to express differing opinions on the attack by the US and Britain.
Mohammed, an aid worker based in the town, said: "This is bad news. The poor are always those who suffer and these strikes probably won't hit the ones that they want." But a local man smiled. "This is great news. The Taliban is very bad."
Nasar, an official with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance who fled his native Kabul in 1996 after the Taliban invaded, summed up the feeling of many others: "This is good news and bad news. People will suffer in Kabul, but I hope that I will be able to return there soon."
People also huddled around pocket radios to listen for further news, the 11th-hour appeal by the Taliban to prevent the attack having failed.
Meanwhile, young men armed with Kalashnikovs stood on street corners. The last few days had brought a growing sense of anticipation of imminently approaching conflict, one that many of the Kalashnikov-toting men, as well as many journalists trapped in the town, welcomed.
"I hope the US bombards," said Fulwaq, who moved to the town in search of work in 1999 while his family fled fighting to Peshawar.
Hoji Bakhoviddin is almost an oasis compared with the arid mountains and deserts of Tajikistan to the north, but it bears the scars of the long conflict which has devastated Afghanistan over the past quarter of a century.
Its strategic location close to the Tajik border turned it into one of the principal military headquarters of the Northern Alliance which was led by Ahmad Shah Masoud.
It was here that Mr Masoud, whose portrait hangs on many walls here, was killed last month by two Moroccans posing as TV journalists, who blew themselves up as well as him during a staged interview.
The Northern Alliance officials see the hand of Osama bin Laden behind the September 11th attacks, which they see as an attempt to curry continued favour and support from the ruling Taliban administration which has harboured him and his groups.
The town also bears witness to more than two years of intensified local clashes with the Taliban, whose front line is on the river Kokch, 30 km away.
Sebastien Trives, Afghan country manager for the French Agency for Co-operation and Technical Development, the only foreign non-governmental organisation working here, estimates that there are 10,000 families or 60,000 people who have fled fighting and settled in or around the town.
"We are in a situation of pre-famine, with all the coping mechanisms of local people exhausted," says Mr Trives. "Families have sold their stored food, have no seeds for sowing, have sold or killed their livestock, taken debts and are suffering from poor nutrition that triggers increased disease."
Frederic Roussel, president of the agency, visited the town yesterday to finalise a $17 million international funding campaign to provide food, shelter and other basic necessities to 75,000 drought-affected families and the 21,000 internally displaced people ahead of winter which begins within a month.
Across the north-east of Afghanistan, the UN estimates that 200,000-300,000 people are vulnerable.
Mr Roussel, who has worked for more than a decade in the country, says he welcomes the assault on the Taliban, whose members he describes as "insane" during his dealings with them after they took the capital Kabul in 1996.
"In a way, it's the end of the nightmare now, but the end of a nightmare is always the worst moment," he says.